Re-installing WD after hard disk crash

[choc-a-holic]

This week I upgrade my very old version (not sure what version number it was) of WD to the latest version.  That night we had massive power issues in our area and even thou I was on surge protection I lost my hard drive.  This happened before the daily backup took place so I don't have a backup of the latest version.

So this is what I did - I installed an old version of WD I had - not 100% sure it was the right version but I normally keep a copy of the version I am running, then copied backup I took before upgrade of all files in wdisplay directory files on top to get all my settings and data back.

I read that you are supposed to execute wdisplayftp.reg but I could not run it.  The file is zero in size.

I then installed the latest version of WD again.

I have had a look around at all my settings...took me a while to find some of them as things have moved around, but everything seem to be there.  My license is registered, I can see all the records,  I can see all February rain stats. I have data showing in the month to date graphs. I would have to load old files to see older stats.

My settings for ftping up to web server have all gone thou which is a pain.

I have not connected the weather station yet as I want to make sure everything is alright and I want to be able to get the missed data.

So now for the sanity check...is there anything I might of missed in checking before I connect my weather station to the laptop again?

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[choc-a-holic]

I have had a look in the registry settings as I cannot restore the file - it keeps saying it is an invalid registry file.  I now know why my ftp settings have gone.  I have everything in the default locations so that will be all good for most of the other settings.    Anyone know what else I might need to fix manually in the absence of the registry file?

[gabba]

Hi
Try an older backup file if you have it, otherwise if it's just the ftp settings you should be able to reset those on the server side.

Most of the other solutions I can think of at the moment rely on being able to see or execute the reg file.

I know there are also some of the max and mins stored in the registry, so check those to make sure they haven't been reset.

I'm a backup stickler, so I feel compelled to mention    that it's good to have plenty of backups. I have stuff in the cloud (AWS and crashplan) and copied over to other drives across my network.

Something like crashplan is a good solution as it will backup any changed files automagically, so I backup my weather PC to another pc on the network, which is then backed up to the cloud. You can also retrieve versions of files over days

Crashplan is reasonably expensive for just weather stuff but there are other ways of doing the same

Of course none of that is much use to you now. It's never a great place to be in!

[choc-a-holic]

Thank you.  I will check min/max when computer finished installing 200 updates.  The joys of rebuilding a PC (with a broken wrist making typing slow).  I prefer to do a clean install thou as my computers get a lot of software installed for testing for clients and a good clean system does wonders.

I am also a stickler for backups.  Most of my data is stored on the NAS(which has mirrored disks) but some software just doesn't work having files stored here.  I use freefilesync to sync data between PC's and QSYNC to QNAP NAS .   Each morning my WD backup goes via FTP to website storage as well.  We have a data safe which is fire proof to 1500 degrees for 2 hours and water proof so backups and all software go into this.  Given we are on very slow ADSL1 we cannot use the internet to sync the volumes of data we woulds need to store.  We are hoping to get fibre by  the end of the year if subdivision across the road goes ahead as planned.  I will then make use of cloud backups   

[choc-a-holic]

I have lots of WD backups going back 2 years with the registry file in them but after trying 5 I have stopped - they all give the same error - the specified file is not a valid registry file.   I have tried editing using notepad++  a couple and they are empty.  It looks like the backup did not extract the registry info correctly as all the files are zero in size. 

I just found a very old copy of the file which is dated in mid 2012 that has loads of entries.  I am going to check that against what is currently set and may use that.  But worried it might be a bit old thou.

[gabba]

Hmmm  - yes that file is very old. I've found the backup process to be pretty good so something weird must have gone on

Cheers

[Weather Display]

Hi
it looks like you have found a back up that works
the wdisplayftp.reg file is just the internet/web page etc settings
and so an older one will be OK to use
the wdisplay.ini settings file contains the rain data, all time records data, station type, and station settings

[choc-a-holic]

Thank you Brian

So if I did not have a backup of the reg file all I would have to do is recreate my ftp settings and reset webpages if I was using them?

[Weather Display]

basicly , yes
if you had WD set to create daily back ups, then should have .zip files in the databackup folder and in those zip files (month stamped) you should have a wdisplayftp.reg file

[choc-a-holic]

I had daily backups setup and I thought that I would have ticked registry backup.   I checked the backup settings after restore and it is ticked.  I checked the overnight backup and there is a registry file with data in it so we are sorted going forward anyway. 

I did run the old registry file after checking the file settings and it is all working again thank you